This thesis examines enclaves of oppression and discrimination, which continue to subject indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Andean society to the pernicious legacies of a racist past. As an interpretive framework this interdisciplinary study draws from theoretical approaches to power, which analyse the reproduction of social injustice in post-colonial societies. This research demonstrates how resistance in post-colonial contexts does not always function as a subversive force. Especially when the variable of racism is taken into account, it becomes clearer how acts of opposition end up fostering a tyrannical domination. Examples from Peruvian history, as well as my fieldwork data, will illustrate how resistances and revolutions in the Peruvian Andes have paradoxically reinstated an oppressive and subjugating social system founded in disavowal of the indigenous Other. In dismantling the ramifications of a violent racist legacy, this study explores those social practices and attitudes which in the course of history have resulted in the subjugation of indigenous peoples. These include paternalism, the commodification of indigenous identity and the phenomenon of incanismo. Ultimately, the very negotiation of identities and the making of Peruvian ethnicity will highlight the reasons why, since the 1970s, the pursuit of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in the Peruvian Andes has been a challenging and uncertain endeavour. By comparison with bordering Andean regions of Ecuador and Bolivia, IBE is not in the hands of indigenous peoples. This thesis will demonstrate that this is in part due to an underpinning racism, which keeps disrupting a sense of belonging to an ethnic identity.

The study of African American Reconstruction leadership has presented a variety of unique challenges for modern historians who struggle to piece together the lives of men, who prior to the Civil War, had little political identity. The scant amounts of primary source data in regard to these leaders’ lives before the war, the destruction of many documents in regard to their leadership following the Reconstruction Era, and the treatment of these figures by historians prior to the Revisionist movement have left this body of extremely important political figures largely unexplored. This dissertation will examine the life of one of Louisiana’s foremost leaders, Lt. Governor Oscar James Dunn, the United States’ first African American executive officeholder. Using previously overlooked papers, Masonic records, Senate journals, newspaper articles and government documents, the dissertation explores Dunn’s role in Louisiana politics and chronicles the factionalization of the Republican Party in Reconstruction New Orleans. Born a slave and released from bondage at an early age, Oscar J. Dunn was able to transcend the stigma which was often attached to those who had been held in slavery. A native of New Orleans, born to Anglo-African parents, he was also able to transcend the language barrier that often excluded Anglo-Africans from social acceptability in Afro-Creole society. Although illiterate, Dunn’s parents made critical strides in securing his social mobility by providing him with both a formal education and a trade apprenticeship. Those skills propelled Dunn forward within his Anglo-African community wherein he became a key figure in the community’s two most important institutions, the York Rite Masonic Lodge and the African Methodist Episcopal church. This dissertation argues that Dunn’s political ascent was linked to the political enfranchisement of antebellum Anglo-Africans in Louisiana, Dunn’s involvement in Anglo-African institutions (particularly the York Rite Masonic Lodge and the African Methodist Episcopal church) and Dunn’s ability to find middle ground in the racially charged arguments that engulfed Reconstruction New Orleans’s political arena. Keywords: Oscar Dunn, Reconstruction, New Orleans, Republican, Louisiana, African American, Politics

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering women, restoring the land, and addressing loss of cultural identity, while also contributing a theoretical template for addressing climate change.

This study documents the lifestyle on a small, prosperous black farmstead in the Richland community of Butler County, Kentucky. It is based on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted with Percy Beeson, owner of the farm for aver fifty years. The result of the fieldwork and interviews was the documentation of how this farmstead, maintained without mechanical farm equipment, worked as a functional unit on a year-round basis. As a functional unit, the Beeson farmstead is described in terms of the Beeson family and their ownership of the farm and the breakdown of the property into two dependent units. In the first area, the Family Unit, the food supply and home industries were prepared and supervised by the women of the household. These activities are discussed according to the seasons of the year, beginning with spring and ending with winter. The second area, the Farm Unit, was run by the Beeson men and contained the major crops and farm animals. This area is also described according to the seasons of the year. The results of this study clearly portray this non-mechanized, small black farmstead as a functional and traditional economic enterprise for Percy Beeson.

This study was initiated to demonstrate how declining neighborhoods can be revitalized through the cooperation and Partnership of local residents, financial institutions, and local government. The Neighborhood II Conservation Plan assumes that interested and informed residents can plan their own environment just as they plan their own family affairs and budget their incomes. The plan further assumes that residents working together as a team can revitalize their neighborhood at the point of decline. This study pursues various approaches to neighborhood preservation which may be useful to other cities.

According to Matthew Arnold an open mind is one of the chief essentials for true literary criticism. One is impressed by the truthfulness of this statement when he seeks to evaluate Negro poetry. The term, Negro poetry, has several interpretations. In its most general sense, the one in which it is used in this paper, it means poetry written by Negroes on any subject. In a more restricted sense it refers to poetry that contains allusions, rhythms, sentiments and idioms more or less peculiar to the Negro. In its narrowest meaning it refers to poetry of racial protest and self-exhortation. It is the undue publicity of poetry of protest and race pride that has displeased many readers. As far as most Americans are concerned, the Negro has been appropriately called "the great American taboo." It is this race prejudice that confronts the critic. A Negro is inclined to praise too highly or, to avoid the accusation of favoritism, to condemn unjustly. The white critic is unconsciously influenced by a feeling of superiority. One of mixed blood is prejudiced toward one side or the other. An honest attempt, however, has been made in this paper to judge fairly the Negro poetry of the twentieth century.

The problem in this study was to examine the relationship of social-climate to the degree of desegregation in the public schools of Kentucky. This study attempted to determine the relationship of educational, economic and social characteristics of those school districts with bi-racial student bodies operating in Kentucky and the degree of desegregation experienced voluntarily by those districts during the period from 1955-56 school year through the 1963-64 school year.

This study is an analysis and interpretation of oral folk history preserved in the Florida Narratives, one state collection of ex-slave narratives from the larger Federal Writers' Project collection compiled in the 1930s. Fifty-four tales were extracted from this state collection and used as a basis for this study. These personal reminiscences, called memorates by folklorists, fell into two categories: slavery and the Civil war. The tales about slavery were compared to the theses and conclusions regarding slavery held by sociologists and The tales about the Civil War and emancipation were gathered by historians. The comparison revealed that there are many reasons these ex-slaves remembered and recounted these tales to collectors. The recording of history was not the primary purpose of these tales. The overriding factor in what was remembered and told about slavery and the Civil War appears to be how the tales functioned to contribute to the self-esteem of the narrators. Emphasis on the following subjects contributed to the dignity of the tale tellers: endurance of cruelty, punishment for excelling in and Indian Civil war, areas supposedly closed to slaves, identification with white ancestors, interpretation of slavery as the only issue of the identification with famous persons and regiments involved in the Civil War, participation in the Civil War effort, emancipation of slaves, administration of revenge or justice to former masters, and personalizing the narratives. Because of their function as ego-builders, the tales in the Florida Narratives cannot be viewed as an accurate or complete picture of slave life and the Civil War. It is evident that in many cases these personal reminiscences, or memorates, were fictionalized and distorted. The folk memory which distorts and fictionalizes, however, is also capable of amazing accuracy. Oral traditions, therefore, must be examined and interpreted individually to arrive at their accuracy and usefulness.

This dissertation studies the musical activities of the Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) during her formative years in Caracas. It examines the sources that pertain to her musical environment, early piano training, and first compositions in the context of the growth in Caracas of the practices of recreational sociability, the increasing influence of virtuosic music, and the tradition of private concert-making sponsored by devoted music amateurs. This study argues that Teresa Carreño’s musical upbringing occurred in a social and cultural context in which Enlightenment-framed ideologies of civilization and social progress, shaped in fundamental ways the perceptions of the value of music and women in society, and their role in the newly-founded republic. This study is aimed at reconstructing Teresa Carreño’s musical activities in Caracas as a means for elucidating the values, aspirations, and contradictions of Caracas’s musical culture and how these were articulated within the broader context of the nation-building process that was shaped and promoted by the progressive intelligentsia since the early nineteenth-century.

This research analyzed three Latina social media celebrities’ self-presentations on Instagram and focused on whether or not the content they published potentially challenges or simply perpetuates stereotypical tropes of Latinas found in mainstream media. This qualitative study took an Ideological Critical approach through a textual analysis that was informed by Feminist Theory. More specifically the research focused on: What were Latina social media celebrities self-presentations on Instagram that characterize what a Latina is? How were Latina social media celebrities self-presentations different from or similar to, mainstream stereotypical tropes for Latinas? Lastly, how do the Latina social media celebrities’ self-presentations compare and contrast, what type of themes emerged?